A family spread over a continent
Apache and Navajo are the southernmost members of the Athabaskan language family. The largest branch lies thousands of kilometers to the north, across the interior of Alaska, the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, northern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Northern Athabaskan peoples are the descendants of the speakers of that branch, and they are the best starting point for understanding why Apache languages belong to such a widely spread family.
Linguists usually divide Athabaskan into three groupings: Northern, Pacific Coast and Southern, the last also called Apachean. The grouping is a language classification. It is not a tribal or political one, and the nations in each group are separate peoples with their own governments, histories and territories. Eyak and Tlingit are generally treated as more distant relatives, belonging with Athabaskan in the larger Na-Dene family.
Who the northern peoples are
The Northern branch includes many languages, and the nations that speak or spoke them go by different names in different sources. Several of the best-known are listed here, with the usual caveat that names and spellings vary, and that many nations now prefer names in their own languages.
In Alaska:
- Gwich’in, in the northeast interior and across the border in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.
- Koyukon, along the Koyukuk and Yukon rivers.
- Ahtna, in the Copper River region in the south-central part of the state.
- Dena’ina, around Cook Inlet, notable as an Athabaskan group living on salt water.
- Tanana, Han and other peoples of the interior.
In Canada:
- Dene Suline, long called Chipewyan in English, whose country covers parts of several provinces and territories.
- Tłı̨chǫ, historically called Dogrib in English, in the Northwest Territories.
- Slavey peoples, including those commonly associated with the Dehcho region.
- Dakelh, also known as Carrier, in central British Columbia.
- Tsilhqot’in, called Chilcotin in English, also in British Columbia.
- Tahltan, Sekani, Beaver (Dunneza) and the Tutchone and other peoples of the Yukon.
This is not a complete list, and it is not meant to suggest that these peoples form one “northern tribe”. Each is a distinct nation or group of nations.
Shared language, different ways of life
The northern Athabaskan homelands include boreal forest, subarctic river valleys, mountains and, in places, the Pacific watershed. Many northern peoples historically relied on a combination of hunting, such as caribou and moose, and fishing, including salmon on rivers that run to the Pacific, though the emphasis varied from region to region and group to group. Winters were long, and travel by snowshoe and toboggan or by river and canoe was important in different places.
In the Southwest the setting is entirely different, and the Apachean peoples developed livelihoods adapted to desert, mountain and plains country, including gathering, hunting, farming in some regions, and trade. The similarity between the language families therefore does not mean a similar way of life. What links them is language and, in the view of many scholars, a distant shared ancestry. Cultural resemblances do exist, and some researchers have pointed to shared ideas in kinship, in stories or in attitudes toward the land, but those need to be described with care and group by group.
How the languages compare
The family resemblance is clearest in grammar and in a core of words. Athabaskan languages tend to have complex verbs with many parts, and a speaker of one can often recognize the pattern in another although the words are not mutually understandable. The common word for “people”, of which Ndee and Dene are versions, is one visible example. The sound systems also share features such as glottal stops, ejective consonants, a voiceless “l” sound, and, in many languages, tone, though the tonal patterns are not the same everywhere.
Languages from far apart in the family cannot be understood by each other’s speakers. A northern speaker and an Apache speaker would not be able to hold a conversation, in the same way that speakers of English and Hindi cannot. The degree of difference suggests a long period of separation, and the relationships are worked out by comparing regular sound changes, as in the comparison of any other language family.
The question of how and when
How Athabaskan speakers came to live in both the far north and the Southwest is a matter of scholarly debate. A common view is that the Apachean ancestors moved south from the north, over a period whose length and timing are disputed, and that they arrived in the Southwest before Europeans did. Some archaeologists favor a route along the Plains and others a route through the mountains, and a number of researchers think that more than one pattern of movement could have occurred. The timing, the routes and the evidence are discussed under the Apachean migration, and no single date is generally agreed.
Apache nations also have their own accounts of origin and emergence, which are not framed in terms of a migration from the north. Both kinds of account are part of the record, and neither should be used to dismiss the other. The wider picture of the Athabaskan peoples of the Americas shows how many different histories are involved.
Language endangerment and revival
Many Athabaskan languages in the north are, like the Apache languages, under pressure. Some have only a small number of fluent speakers, mostly elders, while others are taught in schools and supported by community and government programs. Revitalization is active in places such as Alaska and the Northwest Territories, and some nations have official language status in their territories. As with Apache programs, the details change quickly, and the best sources are the nations’ own websites and language offices.
Why the relationship matters
For readers of Apache history, the northern relatives are a reminder that language relationship is a fact of linguistics, not a claim of shared nationhood. The Apache and the Navajo are separate nations from each other and from the northern peoples. Their closeness in language does not make the political, cultural or historical experience the same. At the same time the relationship shows how large and old the Athabaskan family is, and it places Apache history within a long history of movement and settlement across northern and western North America.